In this week’s “Talk on Tolkien” listen to Michael Drout as he constructs a lecture on “How to Read J.R.R. Tolkien” out of personal reminiscences, a discussion of the features of oral tradition, and images of stone and textual ruins.

Professor Drout is best known to Tolkien scholars as one of the founding editors of the journal Tolkien Studies, and the editor of the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment and of Tolkien’s Beowulf and the Critics. You can find out more about his publications and projects on his website MichaelDrout.com, on his blog Wormtalk and Slugspeak, or by following him on twitter: @MikeDrout.

The following lecture was delivered in October 2013 at Carnegie Mellon University. Michael Drout was an undergraduate there, and in his talk he pays tribute to his former medieval literature professor, Peggy Knapp, while recalling some of his experiences as a student. But don’t be fooled into thinking that these are simply personal digressions from the subject of Tolkien; Drout masterfully interlaces the different strands of his talk to build to his concluding reflections on textual ruins and nostalgia in Tolkien’s work.

After listening to this talk, you might end up reflecting on the pastness of the past and the ways in which it is overlaid by the present. This “joyous and heartbreaking” feeling of longing is not only found in Tolkien’s work but also in many Old English poems. I thought it would be interesting to extend Professor Drout’s meditation on ruins by looking at a video adaptation of the Old English poem known as “The Ruin” which layers past and present in unexpected ways:

(You might note that the director, translator, and speaker in this film is Stuart Lee, a professor at Oxford University who is a medievalist and a Tolkien scholar.)

If you are interested in delving further into Professor Drout’s discussion of the features of oral tradition, such as “communicative economy” and “traditional referents,” I would recommend John Miles Foley’s book How to Read an Oral Poem as a great starting point.

As always, any comments are welcome. Does Michael Drout’s view of how to read Tolkien strike a chord with you? Do you see the same qualities in the text as he does? Other thoughts?

In my corner of the world, cold winds are lashing up rainstorms and snowfalls for the start of the new year: good days to stay cozy at home, to read, think, and write. To accompany any reading or re-reading of Tolkien in this winter season, I thought that it would be fun to highlight every weekend a podcast or video featuring a different Tolkien scholar: a “Talks on Tolkien” series. Some of the videos and podcasts will be recent; others buried a little further in the files of the web, but all, I hope, thought-provoking and informative.

Because I’m posting the first selection late in this weekend, I’ll keep it short, a twenty-minute video by a foremost Tolkien scholar, Verlyn Flieger, who is one of my favorite critics. In this talk, “Imaginary Creatures — Real Experience,” Professor Flieger, I believe, gets to the core of The Lord of the Rings and argues that it is not the simplistic good vs. evil story many people think it is.

Recently, an opposing opinion has been expressed by the writer Michael Moorcock in an interview on Dr. Karl Siegfried’s Norse Mythology Blog. In Part Two of that interview, Moorcock says that “it’s the simplification, rejection of the world’s complexity, that discomforts me with Tolkien.” Take a look at Moorcock’s argument; listen to Flieger’s in the video. Let me know what you think!

Coming up in the next few weeks: talks by Tom Shippey, Michael Drout, Dimitra Fimi, John Garth, Janet Brennan Croft, John D. Rateliff, and more. Check back every Friday or Saturday for the next installment of “Talks on Tolkien.” And please note: my intention is to curate a series of already-available resources online; I’m not planning on producing any new talks on Tolkien, though I do hope I can suggest some interesting contexts for my selections.

You can find out more about Verlyn Flieger’s work on her website, mythus.com.

Today I have a post that combines my interests in both Tolkien and pedagogy.

In one of my English courses, Studies in Medievalism: Tolkien and Myth-making, I ask students to read the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and some of the medieval literature that influenced him. We also consider later adaptations of Tolkien’s fiction in various media. As part of this cultural study of contemporary fandom and myth-making, students have the option of producing their own adaptation of Tolkien’s Middle-earth stories, accompanied by a researched analysis that relates their project to critical discussions of adaptation, fandom, medievalism, and Tolkien’s fiction.

In the January 2014 semester, my student Shelby MacGregor produced a series of photographs illustrating scenes from an imagined dystopian Lord of the Rings movie, set sometime in the near future. The analysis that she wrote to accompany these pictures discussed Tolkien’s representation of nature and technology compared to Peter Jackson’s film versions and considered some of the problems of adaptation.

Below, you will find some of Shelby’s photographs along with her descriptions. (All photos copyright Shelby MacGregor).

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Photos and Descriptions by Shelby MacGregor

This project aimed to present scenes in a post-modern adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. It was heavily inspired by Peter Jackson’s interpretation of the trilogy, and also by the science fiction films of Ridley Scott.

Moving the story to somewhere in our future instead of somewhere in our past would require different weapons and technologies from the original. The Ring became a computer chip, and instead of throwing the Ring into a volcano, it became a virus that would be installed into the Super Computer that was controlling industry and therefore destroying the world.

Frodo and Sam play a large role in this imagined film, as they are charged with installing the virus in the Super Computer. They are dressed in more natural clothes to connect to the natural lifestyles of the people in the Shire and to contrast the natural world with industry in a visual and striking way. Mordor appears as a power plant, with Frodo daunted by the size and destruction found in the modern world.

Each character is styled differently to reflect the regions of Tolkien’s Middle-earth that they come from. Lady Eowyn is the closest to Jackson’s representation of her. It is assumed that the people of Rohan accept less technology than the rest of Middle-earth, preferring to tend to their horses.

This project allowed me to work with adaptation theory, photography, editing, and costume design, as I made or styled every item that the characters are wearing. I was aiming to make film scenes come to life that are instantly recognizable as The Lord of the Rings, while also staying away from simply remaking Jackson’s film scenes. It was an interesting and challenging project, and I am glad that I got the opportunity to try something creative.